Think the stories about the wild popularity of Pokémon Go are overstating things?
Think again. In the two weeks following the release of the game, sales of smartphone backup batteries went through the roof.
Early on in the Pokémon Go hype cycle, there were signs that players were driving a significant uptick in sales of backup batteries, like the Mophie units you may be familiar with that offer USB connections for topping up mobile devices while you’re away from an outlet. Now, research from analytics firm NPD Group goes beyond early anecdotal evidence to show that in fact, unit sales across the portable power pack segment saw a 101 percent spike in the two weeks spanning July 10 and July 23, as compared to the same period last year.
Overall demand for mobile batteries has been high in general this year – NPD days sales are up 35 percent year-over-year on a 12-month measure as of June 2016. But between that time and the launch of Pokemon Go in early July, the tracker was actually showing a slowdown in sales for the category overall, with only a four percent increase for the six weeks prior to Go’s debut. Total sales for the two weeks where the big Go spike occurred were at almost 1.2 million units in total.